[Phpmyadmin-devel] legal concerns about external libraries

[Marc Delisle]

Dieter Adriaenssens a écrit :
> 2011/8/3 Marc Delisle <marc at infomarc.info>:
>> Michal Čihař a écrit :
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Dne Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:18:33 -0400
>>> Marc Delisle <marc at infomarc.info> napsal(a):
>>>
>>>> Michal Čihař a écrit :
>>>>> I still wonder if native support for Excel 2007 is worth including 3
>>>>> MiB of code.
>>>> Where I work, a user faced a situation where simple CSV exporting was
>>>> not enough but I don't remember the specifics. Maybe Dieter can add his
>>>> comments about native support's advantages.
>>> Having use case when native Excel is needed would definitely help in
>>> making such decision.
>> Michal,
>> in this old message from June 2004
>> https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=20040608142911.GA10581%40ns.liten.cz&forum_name=phpmyadmin-devel
>> you mention that you added MS Excel export with PEAR
>> Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer.
>>
>> Then Garvin Hicking replied "it's a good benefit".
>>
>> We could ask the phpmyadmin-users list about use cases.
> 
> Good idea.
> 
> I wouldn't drop Excel (97/2003 or 2007) export just like that, unless
> nobody seems to use it of course. ;)
> F.e. : It's very useful to export data from a database using a query
> to an excel-sheet to use for further analysis (or other uses).
> Since both Excel 2003 and 2007 (and other versions) are still widely
> used, I don't think that any of them can be dropped.
> It's true that CSV-export can be used for that, but it would mean an
> extra step to convert to Excel.

Not necessarily an extra step. In my tests, Excel is happy to open this 
.csv file and save changes to it (it just displays a warning at save 
time but no need to convert).

I admit I'm not a seasoned Excel user.

> 
> I had a brief look at the PHPExcel library yesterday and I think it
> will be possible to remove a lot from the library that we don't use,
> including the OLE part (which would solve the license problem). OLE is
> used to link objects (like an excel sheet or a graph) to other
> documents/applications, but we don't use that when exporting to Excel
> format.
> 
>>>>> How about shipping just wrapper files (export and import plugins),
>>>>> which would work only if PHPExcel is installed in PHP search path?
>>>> This might be more difficult to set up for user in hosting environments.
> 
> True, but the phpMyAdmin package has to be installed by someone
> anyway. It could be part of the installation procedure to install the
> PHPExcel library somewhere.
> But then again, this might cause compatibility problems with future
> releases of both phpMyAdmin and PHPExcel.
> 
>>> It definitely would be, however it would save us of licensing troubles
>>> and decrease download size.

-- 
Marc Delisle
http://infomarc.info